The Character Issue, Part I

I asserted in The Internet: good news or bad for languages? that reports of an English victory on the Web are greatly exaggerated. What I did not mention is that cyberspace has been anglicised insofar as the English character set has become the Internet standard. This two-part series will answer some frequently-asked questions and equip speakers of other languages to live more comfortably under the English keyboard dictatorship. Part I deals with Roman-written languages other than English. Part II, which uploads 15 September, will focus on Cyrillic, kanji and other non-Roman writing systems.

All Western European languages, and many others, are written in the Roman alphabet, the 26 sponsors of Sesame Street. While some don't use all 26, most modify some letters with diacriticals (accent marks). Contemporary English is eccentric; it uses only unmodified letters.

And that's the problem. Computer systems, historically of American design, are notoriously unilingual, resulting in a dramatic drop in quality of non-English text. Using diacritically-challenged software is like being deprived of c, g, and i; you kan stell read et, but et es awkward, enelekant, and deffekult. English-only products are on a par with Y2K-ware for primitive engineering. Consumers must winch the computer industry into the present by insisting products and services respect their languages.

In the meantime, stop-gap measures may secure better service from resources already available. Most word-processing software, and many online systems, actually can produce diacriticals. Microsoft products often require raw ASCII codes be entered for each accented letter. To type é, for example, hold down the Alt key while typing 130 on the number pad at the righthand side of the keyboard. (The number keys at the top of the keyboard will not work.) Accented capitals require their own codes; É is Alt + 136, if memory serves. Most available diacriticals fall between 130 and 160.

The Macintosh platform is better suited to multilingual environments, and is more or less standard among linguists and interpreters. Macs have user-friendly, pre-programmed macros for common diacriticals. (Some IBM/Microsoft products, especially those sold outside the US, have a similar feature.) Apple's US keyboard, default on most Macs, uses Option codes. The umlaut, for example, is Option + u. To type ö, hold down the Option key while typing u, then release the Option key and type o. For Ö, type Option + u, then Shift + o. The keystrokes are intuitive, relatively fast, and easily memorised. Other Mac keyboards use an even faster double-strike scheme that eliminates the Option key.

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